Using sealable waterproof bags with frictional washing surfaces inside provides travellers with a convenient and lightweight device for washing clothing when they are away from home. Such bags provide an alternative to soaking clothes in a basin or paying to have their clothing washed.
To wash clothing, users add 2-4 liters of water, a small amount of cleaning material (e.g. shampoo, body wash, washing liquid or powder, etc.) and several items of dirty clothing. The bag is sealed and air may be expelled through a valve. A user then places the bag on a table or the floor and rubs the clothing against the inner frictional washing surface for 20-40 seconds. The clothing may then be removed and rinsed. Optionally, the bag may be provided with an external grip surface (backing the frictional washing surface) to prevent the bag from sliding and/or to prevent the frictional washing surface from bunching up.
Such bags may have a volume of between about 2 L and 40 L and may weigh between about 30 g and 1500 g. A particularly effective sealing mechanism that may be used to seal the bag is a roll-down seal (these may include fabric webbing straps or rubber/plastic stiffeners that are brought together before rolling the straps or stiffeners down the bag 3-4 times and clipping the ends of the seal together). Other seals may be used such as waterproof zippers, fold-over seals, zip-lock seals, drawstrings, crimp seals, releasable glue/sticky seals, hydrophobic material seals, clamping seals, etc.
Creating and applying the frictional washing surface to the bag is a complex and involved process. For example, the frictional washing surface may be produced by injection moulding and then must be adhered to the housing material of the bag. This involves complex and expensive tooling and several steps to arrive at the final product. It is therefore desirable to provide an improved method for producing the sealable waterproof bags with the frictional washing surfaces for washing clothing.